Atlantic Roots

James William Macdonald and Elise Maud Dewar

Jim and Elsie Macdonald, Westville, ca 1919

Jim and Elsie are my great-grandparents. Jim was a soldier in the first world war, but was injured and sent back to the main port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Elsie was working as an accountant for the local newspaper. They were married in Halifax on 19 Dec 1919, and I believe this picture was taken around the time of their engagement. Certainly it is not taken at the time of their wedding; safe to say that there would have been snow and leaves would not have been on the trees. I wish I had a formal wedding photo, but I don't, so this one will have to do. I must say, I really like her coat.

I have two wedding announcements for Jim and Elsie: one from the Halifax paper where Elsie worked; the other from Jim's hometown paper in Westville, Nova Scotia. Let's start with the big-city formal announcement, shall we?

  MacDONALD - DEWAR

Halifax, December 22--Rev. John Y. MacKinnon, minister of St. John's Presbyterian church, officiated at the marriage, therein last evening, of Elsie Maud, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dewar, of Charlottetown, and James MacDonald, C. E., of Westville, a large group of friends and well wishers being present to witness the ceremony. Miss Dewar has held with signal efficiency the responsible position of bookkeeper in the employ of The Herald and The Mail, and is a charming and popular girl. Mr. MacDonald also has a wide circle of friends in the city.

The bride wore a smart tailored suit of dark brown, with hat and furs to correspond, and carried a shower bouquet of carnations and roses.

Mrs. Esdalle [??] presided at the organ, giving a fine rendition of the wedding marches.

Immediately after the ceremony Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald left for Charlottetown, proposing to spend the honeymoon at the home of the bride. Thither they are followed by the best wishes of a host of friends.

The collection of wedding gifts was a large one, and included a cabinet of silver from the editorial, business and mechanical staffs of The Herald and The Mail.

The bride has during the past three or four weeks received numerous gratifying proofs of the regard of friends, including several "showers."

Pretty sweet, isn't it? Do you think that Mrs. E, the organ player, reveled in the reviews of her wedding marches? I also wonder if any of the silver my grandparents have is from the wedding gift?

Although just as friendly, the announcement from the other paper is much less formal and more...small townish. Like an informative letter, almost.

Announcements have been received in town conveying the good news of the marriage of our townsman James W. MacDonald, son of Mr. and Mrs. Alex R. MacDonald, Union Street, to Miss Elsie M. Dewar, of Charlottetown, P. E. I. The marriage took place in St. John's Presbyterian Church, at Halifax, on Monday evening last. They are spending a short wedding trip in Charlottetown. Jim is one of Westville's most popular boys, a member of the original 85th Battalion, and his hosts of friends will join in wishing the young couple a happy and prosperous married life.

I'd love to add a photo of the church to my collection, but unfortunately Jim and Elsie's wedding fell into a little blip in church history. The St. John's congregation had begun building a new church in the North End of Halifax in 1917 (two years before the wedding), but just two months into the project, the Halifax Explosion flattened that area of the city (Jim and Elsie weren't in Halifax at that time, thankfully, although the story goes that the explosion rattled the windows in Charlottetown). After that, building the church wasn't quite the priority it had been. The new church was finished, however, by the time Jim and Elsie were married in 1919, and the space must have been new and beautiful when they held their ceremony. But apparently the space was also too small.

In 1920 a cornerstone was laid for a new sanctuary and bell tower, just 40 yards from the (new) old church. I'm not sure if they built a whole new church or just did a massive renovation, but by 1921 Jim and Elsie's wedding spot was obsolete. I'm afraid that 1918 to 1921 is a small window for finding pictures (not that I won't continue to try!).

Stylin'

Four brothers dressed up (my grandfather is third from left), 1970

Deafness in the Family

Ruth Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Bentley) Tupper, Halifax, 1867

This is really kind of a part two to a part one: Deaf and Dumb Institution, Halifax.

Lizzie Bentley, my GG grandmother, was not born deaf. Family lore says she lost her hearing due to an accident at the age of three, which is not unheard of. It is, however, more likely that she had an illness; at the time, Scarlet fever was the leading cause of deafness other than heredity. Of course, there was still a lot of speculation in the latter part of the 19th century, most of it rather unflattering to the families: poverty, negligence, inbreeding, and damp and ill-ventilated buildings were all suggested causes. Scaring a pregnant woman, at least, was no longer thought to be an issue.

At any rate, Lizzie could hear and speak at birth, and then, suddenly, she could not hear. Luckily, the Deaf and Dumb Institution in Halifax--about sixty miles away--opened when she was seven. She began attending the school when she was eleven and would stay for six years, graduating in 1867. (Her future husband, Robert Tupper, attended from 1857 until 1863, so they probably met at the school in 1861, when Lizzie arrived. She was eleven and he was twenty-four. Thank goodness they didn't marry for another twelve years.)

The Deaf and Dumb Institution in Halifax was, by necessity, a boarding school. It took in students from all over the Maritime provinces and even a few from the US. By the time Lizzie attended, they averaged forty students a year. There were three teachers--including the principal--and, therefore, three classes. This put a broad range of students in each class and made teaching difficult.

The principal of the school at the time was J. Scott Hutton. Fortunately, he wrote a lot of papers, textbooks, and articles and generally communicated what he was up to to whomever would listen. We therefore know that, when Lizzie attened his school, Hutton was not a fan of lip-reading. Just after Lizzie graduated, Hutton wrote:

"With the antique and obsolescent method of articulation and lip-reading, which some earnest but mistaken friends of the deaf and dumb, are now laboring so energetically to revive and extend, we confess to have little sympathy."*

Hutton goes on to explain that he doesn't believe audible speech and lip-reading are attainable for most students. Well, attainable or not, it seems unlikely that Lizzie and Robert would have learned it at Hutton's school. Instead, they would have been taught to to read and write--"the principal source of knowledge and the grand instrument of communication"*--and to use sign language. They learned Natural Signs (basically, if I understand it correctly, acting out things as well as you can so that anyone could understand them) as and the one-handed and two-handed alphabet.

Once communication was established, a general education of history, geography, and whatnot could begin. The curriculumn was designed and honed over the years, and in the 1870s Hutton published a series of textbooks, several of which are available online at Kobo. I particularly like the language lesson book, which is peppered with little notes to the student that vary from the friendly, "Good morning! How do you do?" to the stern, "Be quiet. Sit in your seat." and the rather questionable, "Don't be inquisitive." Humph.

*"Deaf-Mute Education..." pg 75.

More reading:

J. Scott Hutton, "Deaf-Mute Education in the British Maritime Provinces," American Annals of the Deaf, Volume 14 (Raleigh, N. C.: Press of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind), pg 65-82.

George Hutton, "Practicability and Advantages of Writing and Printing Natural Signs," American Annals of the Deaf, Volume 14 (Raleigh, N. C.: Press of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind), pg 157.

J. Scott Hutton, Language Lessons for the Deaf and Dumb (Halifax, N. S.: The Pupils at the Institution Press, 1878).

The Deaf and Dumb Institution, Halifax

 
Students learning sign language, 1893. Photographed by Gauvin & Gentzel. School for the Hearing Handicapped NSARM accession no. 1990-205

I've known that we had deafness the family since I was little. My father still remembered some of the sign language he learned to speak to his great-grandmother, who died just a few days short of her 100th birthday in 1950. He said she used an older version of sign language, different from ASL. But when I first starting delving in to the details of Ruth Elizabeth Bentley and her husband Robert Tupper, I had no idea how fascinating it would all be.

Robert's parents, Samuel and Martha (Howard) Tupper, had ten children and three of them were born deaf, all male. John Creelman Tupper came first in 1835. Then Robert G. Tupper (my GGG grandfather) on 10 Sep 1837, and later on Franklin Tupper, born on 18 Sep 1851. At the time, in Nova Scotia, there were few options for educating a deaf child. The nearest school was in Quebec, which had opened just a few years before John was born. It was almost 600 miles away and most likely French. Another option would be to find a private educator, but how practical (or expensive) that would be, I'm not sure. I'm also not sure what sort of formal eduction these Tupper boys would have received, but what I do know is that John (then 21) and Robert (19) were first in line for an education when the Deaf and Dumb Institution first opened its doors. Franklin attended the school as well.

The school was the brain child of two deaf men from Scotland, who had both attended the same school for the deaf in Edinburgh and then ended up immigrating to Nova Scotia and running into each other again. George Tait was a carpenter; William Gray a tailor. Apparently there was some dispute later over who actually founded the school, but generally the story goes that Gray was underemployed and Tait was tutoring a young deaf girl (although in some versions Gray was doing the tutoring) when Tait began to urge Gray to become a teacher of the deaf. Gray agreed, the men set about raising funds and, in Tait's case, building the desks for the classrooms. They opened shop on Argyle Street in 1857 with just four children. Two of them were probably John and Robert, who started in 1857 at some point.

The Deaf and Dumb Institution, ca 1876. Here's a photo.

Shortly thereafter, the school took off. Clearly there had been a need! Students came from all over the Maritimes. Thankfully, government grants and private donations allowed the hiring of a trained teacher, J. Scott Hutton, also from Edinburgh. Soon after his arrival, however, Scott was begging his own father, still in Scotland, to join his over-worked teaching staff. Mr. George Hutton had been teaching the deaf for over forty years already, and he did come to Halifax where he worked for the next ten years (without pay!) until he died in 1870.

J. Scott Hutton, principal of the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, Halifax

I imagine that the new school brought the deaf community together for the first time. The Tupper boys certainly made friends and both John and Robert found wives at the school. J. Scott Hutton translated the ceremony at Robert's wedding (in 1873 to Ruth Elizabeth Bentley) and John and Robert's hearing sister, Cynthia Amelia, married George Tait, the man who helped found the school!

For further reading:

Edward Allan Fay, editor, Histories of American Schools for the Deaf, 1817-1893 Volume III (Washington, D.C.: The Volta Bureau, 1893). It's available through Google books.

The Silent Worker is a newsletter about the deaf community published from 1888 to 1929. The complete collection is available online. In fact, the Gallaudet University Archives is a treasure-trove. And speaking of Gallaudet:

Joseph C. Gordon, editor, Education of Deaf Children: Evidence of Edward Minor Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell (Washington, D.C.: The Volta Bureau, 1892). Also available through Google books (love Google Books!).

Hockey Night in Canada

This picture is of Tom Dewar, a Dewar boy from Charlottetown, PEI. It is owned by my grandmother, who identified him (she is his niece).